Name: Tiger King's Bhagavan "Doc" Antle | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #271
Uploaded: 2020-03-30T13:00:21.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Tiger King's Bhagavan "Doc" Antle | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #271' from Theo Von on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-03-30. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Tiger King's Bhagavan "Doc" Antle | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #271' from Theo Von on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-03-30. Transcript available.

Tiger King's Bhagavan "Doc" Antle | This Past Weekend w/ Theo Von #271

Today's guest has made over a dozen appearances on The Tonight Show with Jay
Leno.
He is the founder of the Institute for Greatly Endangered and Rare Species, T-I-G-E-R-S,
in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and is the owner of Myrtle Beach Safari in Myrtle
Beach,
South Carolina. Today's guest from The Tiger King is Bhagavan Dak Antal.
Shine that light on me. I'll sit and tell you my stories.
Shine that light on me. I'll sit and tell you my stories.
Hey, Doc. Can you hear me?
I can. How you doing?
Oh, wonderful. Thank you so much for joining me this afternoon, bro.
Glad to be on. Glad we got to put it together.
Yeah, yeah. Thank you for your patience.
Chatting here with Doc Antal from Myrtle Beach Safari, which probably is it the
premier cat visitation spot in the U.S., would you say?
In the world, by far. There's no place like this.
You know, we just have this fabulous location that people can have such a grand
time at that is really a palace for the wildlife in our care.
And it looks really higher end. It looks more like the Four Seasons of Animalia
over there by you, whereas opposed to, you know, you look at, you know, a place
like Joe Exotic is running more of like a still a beautiful place, but a little
bit more, you know, something you'd see it like maybe like a rural carnival or
something like that.
Yeah, I mean, you know, it's the opportunity of time and money for us.
Yes, this is going 39 years of doing this.
Wow.
And I had the blessing of engaging in the biz and being around, started working
so heavily in the 80s and 90s, work in Hollywood and doing stuff.
And we made Ace Ventura and Jungle Book and Dr. Doolittle and 500 movie and
television projects around the world.
And all that led me to a different vision of how to do it and the financial
opportunity to create something that could have that five-star appeal.
Joe just never had the time, never had the money.
And I am in this glorious spot that is one of the hot spots of tourism in the
world here in Myrtle Beach.
Oh, yeah, beautiful.
20 million people come here every year.
So it's so filled with people looking for adventure and opportunity from all
over the world.
The middle of nowhere, Oklahoma, is a hard place to do something.
There's only three things that matter, right?
Location, location, location.
Location.
Amen, man.
You guys have a great location over there.
A lot of people, when they watch you in the Tiger King documentary, they see
not only a man that's able to really wrangle pets, but also a man that's really
able to wrangle females.
You know, I think a lot of men were impressed.
A lot of men, I'm a man, you know, for now, but I live in Hollywood.
You never know what they're going to try to do to me.
But a lot of men were just as impressed with your ability to attract females as
to attract, you know, this sort of Tarzan atmosphere with the animals.
Does the way you relate to women and the way you relate to animals, is there
some similarities there?
No, I mean, come on.
I'm a single guy.
I was married, you know, 25 years ago.
But I'm a single guy.
I've got girlfriends.
They've come and gone over the years.
I mean, it can't be unique that I have girlfriends.
It's just that they got put on a screen and said this and that.
And then they included all of my son's fiancé and my grandson's kids and my
granddaughters and everybody else.
They're like, look at that lineup of all those ladies.
Those ladies are my relatives and or the significant others of my staff and my
friends and stuff that are here helping me out.
I see.
So the documentary really, they tacked on a few extra ladies to your tiger tail,
I guess.
Yeah, I mean, the count was just like going up like bodies hit the floor.
They're like, oh, my God, there's seven, nine, eleven.
It's up in there.
It's crazy land.
You know, that's not how it goes by any means, you know, and the tales of woe
that somebody wants to say or just the judgmental insanity of people.
Yeah.
Oh, my God, this guy's got girlfriends.
What on earth that that is part of Americana for me?
Amen.
No, I agree.
Look, I think a lot of men, a lot of people were probably jealous if even at
the the assumption of it.
Did you get a lot of people reaching out saying that's wrong?
You shouldn't have that type of lifestyle.
Like, did you get a lot of lifestyle judgment, lifestyle judgment stuff?
And just somehow that the ladies are very young and are taken advantage of and
all from the dritter that was coming out of the one unique character's mouth
that talked on there.
The girls that are here, these are women in their 40s, you know, rolling up on
50.
Those are the key characters that help run the preserve.
These aren't teenagers that are walking around here.
Granted, some of them have been there for decades, but these are girls that
operate this facility that are kickass, lion tamer girls who hold their own and
have been doing so and operating the facility autonomous from me.
I don't even have to be here and they can make it roll along and have
everything work out.
Oh, that's impressive.
Yeah, no, it definitely seemed like a lot of tough women there.
A lot of, you know, confident, confident ladies.
What is it about a cat that women love a cat?
What is it about a cat?
I mean, it just is this incredible symbol of beauty, power and grace.
A tiger is the sexiest thing in the world.
It's covered in that incredible primordial calligraphy, those amazing stripes
against that super orange background.
It's like an unreal superhero character.
Everybody's kind of got a vibe of loving tigers.
And when you see one in person, it just carries forward.
It makes people excited.
People want to get their hands on them.
And when you get the incredible opportunity that I've gotten and some of the
senior staff that are here where you have great big 600 to 922 pound tigers
come up and lay their neck on you and rub, rub, rub.
And you can walk with them.
You know, there's the girls that jump on their back and they run off and they
ride them.
This is an unbelievable privilege.
It's just you are communing with a slice of nature in its greatest.
It's a reflection.
In a tiger's face, there's like a reflection of nature at its purest.
You're looking out at the eyes of God in a way when a tiger is staring into
your face.
It is what I call God's greatest paint job.
Just a fabulous kid.
And they're incredible when they're little because they're just miniature
tigers.
They look just like big tigers, which is so unique.
You know, not a lot of little things look just like the big things.
Oh, yeah.
It's got that super appeal when they're young and people have the opportunity
to meet them and interact with them.
And it's a bucket list with so many people put right up.
Oh, yeah.
I want to see a tiger.
And they want to see a big tiger.
A lot of them think, man, I want to pet a big tiger.
Now, you know, I've heard you talking a little bit, watching your show.
I've been watching, you know, the King of the Sting.
Oh, yeah.
King of the Sting.
You know, some people are a little hesitant.
They think that a tiger is going to do something incorrect.
But our big tigers are fabulous guys.
You know, we did it.
We made Jim Carrey look like the pet detective.
We made Eddie Murphy look like Dr. Doolittle.
It's that we have a great relationship with these unbelievable big predators.
And we're able to have them interact with us and act as though they are tame.
They're not.
I certainly don't think anybody should take one home.
They do not make pets.
They're not something that I think the untrained should do anymore.
And you should be out doing, you know, driving a race car 250 miles an hour
like the pros do.
It's something that takes time to learn how to do and decades of devotion and
understanding,
which most people never gather.
Yeah.
And most people don't have the opportunity to, you know.
And yeah, it's definitely like, I think that's one of the most fascinating
things about a Tiger King documentary
and just for a lot of the nation to learn about you kind of, you know, cat
liaison men who are able to really interact with these animals
is that so many people just don't have that opportunity to be that bridge
between humans and just cat them, you know.
Yep.
And it's just something that is very complicated, right?
It's not something simple to do.
And you see people like Carol, who's a fool with her cats.
She got out there.
She tried to hug and kiss them and play with them.
It all fell apart.
That's the normal story.
Joe certainly has had a bunch of big cats around.
But as they matured and became older cats, almost all the relationships have
fallen apart.
The rest of the characters on the show, none of them have those great
relationships with big adult cats
outside of enclosures where they're freely interacting and doing what they do.
Do you see my son, Cody?
I think you have seen him, that modern tiger man that's out there with gigantic
adult tigers
wrestling, riding, swimming, playing, the same as I did for my whole youth.
And I still do all the time now.
He's just the flash and the beautiful guy out there making it look like it's so
simple.
But that is super rare.
He's one of a kind left in the world.
What is it, like 13 million people following him on social media?
He has such a unique presence and such a fabulous thing going on that's
different than anybody else.
Yeah, he's able to really get out there and interact with those cats.
I mean, I definitely noticed that.
I was checking out some of his YouTube videos yesterday.
When you look at the documentary, do you see, like, where did they go wrong?
Like, are there things that obviously they blew out of proportion?
I mean, obviously, they, you know, tried to classify or make it just vaguely
look like your granddaughter
could be, you know, a woman you're dating or something.
But what else did they do?
What else did they capture wrong?
Or what else did we not get the true story on when you look at it?
I mean, the huge line they stepped over was there at the end, bringing up on
the black
screen that they have asked me about some inappropriateness with Tiger Cubs.
And I haven't answered, but in fact, these guys talked to me for maybe five
full days of
filming and three or four half days.
They asked me every question in the world.
99% of them had nothing to do with anything that was going to become Tiger King.
And they just pick and chose little pieces.
Of course, I run this incredible world-class operation.
I have Tiger Cubs that live with me, cradle to grave.
No tiger babies are ever going to be euthanized or ever going to be pushed out
of the way.
They're incredibly precious to us all the way from what they provide us to just
their very
nature to they have hyper value.
They're super rare.
We are reproducing tigers that have all been genetically tested from the time
they're young
and from their grandparents and great-grandparents.
And we genetically test them to know that these are some of the most
genetically diverse tigers
on earth.
The old ones left on the planet with this genetic makeup.
We've done that through world-class genetics that continue to work for us, with
us.
And those guys have been able to see this incredibly rare opportunity that we
have.
And this is a bank against the potential eventual extinction.
Tigers are super rare.
Oh yeah, I never see a tiger.
You can go buy a tiger.
Well, that's just a complete joke.
I cannot go buy a tiger.
I know everybody that's ever been around.
99% of everyone who ever used to do it is gone.
There is no one that has a tiger for sale that you can solicit and find.
It is a felony.
It, you know, yeah, you can buy some heroin, I guess, somewhere, but it's a
heck of a step
to go and illegally be involved with whoever it is to move and sell any kind of
super illegal
product and that's what a tiger would be.
And they got that.
Is there a black market?
Is there a black market for them?
Not America.
There's a black market in Laos or Cambodia or, you know, places i